My running story

July 23, 2017

I spent the first 29 years of my life hating running. I truly despised it. But as I approached my 30th birthday, as a mom to a five year old and three year old, I knew I needed to make some changes in my life. My laundry room was downstairs, and hauling baskets up and down those stairs always made me out of breath and frustrated. So decided to start with a small goal – run for 20 minutes without stopping. I was slow, but I succeeded. My next goal was to run 3 miles without stopping, and I did it. About nine months later, I ran my first half marathon in under 2 hours! I was ecstatic! I ended up losing about 30lbs and gaining a lot of confidence and having more endurance than I ever imagined possible. I kept it up for a couple years, participating in a variety of races and even convincing my husband Brian to run with me.

Then my baby went into kindergarten, and Brian and I decided we weren’t done having babies. Early in my pregnancy I tried to keep running, then walking, but multiple vomiting episodes every day for over five months took me out of the game. I was always nauseous, always tired, always puking (I even kept ziplock bags in the car in case I had to throw up while driving – this is a useful tip because one of those bags came in handy when my daughter got sick two years later). By the time my healthy baby boy was born, I hadn’t run in nine months. I gave myself time to recover, but found that raising two big kids (both busy with activities) and a new baby left me pretty exhausted and lacking motivation. The littlest was over a year old when I finally started running again. So I took about a two year break and felt reeeeally rusty the first couple months.

I’m in another new season. I believe that life is a series of seasons, blooming and dying and starting over again and changing all the time. Fortunately, this time I know what I’m capable of because I’ve done it before, and my motivation is that I know how it feels to reap the rewards (fitness, endurance, confidence, stress relief, so much more!). Yesterday I ran 3 miles on my basement treadmill (shown below in my lovely toy-filled basement, Survivor on the TV with closed captioning so I can read what’s happening, my phone blasting music, and a fan giving me a nice breeze). My current goal is to run 4 days/week and work my way up to having one long run of 6-8 miles once/week – eventually a 10-12 mile run once/month.

QUESTIONS!!!

If you’re a runner, have you ever taken a long hiatus, and if so how did you get motivated to start again?

Treadmill or outside running? I have a feeling I know the answer to 95% of you, but I’m not ashamed to say I love treadmill running! That’s a good thing, because my older kids are too big for the Y kidzone/too young for me to feel comfortable leaving alone or unsupervised in the “family room” (so no Y membership) and it’s been 100+ degrees here in Kansas lately (so no outdoor running)!

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About Me

Hi, I'm Lisa! Thanks for visiting!! I'm a 30-something wife of B and mom of 3, blogging about parenting, perspective, eating, running (because: eating), and ways to live your best life (I watched a lot of Oprah growing up). Sign up for email notifications below!

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